New Route Shakes Residents Near Airport

May 12, 1989|By AVIDO D. KHAHAIFA, Staff Writer

Even though he has spent 15 years living near airports and guiding planes onto flight ramps, Jim Damisch wonders how he will sleep as low-flying jets shake, rattle and roll the contents of his apartment.

``It`s bad enough for me. I can just imagine what it`s like for people who aren`t used to it,`` Damisch said.

Commercial flights started taking off and landing on the alternate runway at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Thursday as crews began resurfacing the main runway, a job that will take 1/2 months.

It was the beginning of a nightmare for people such as Damisch, who lives in the Edgewood area of Fort Lauderdale, just north of the airport along Northwest 15th Avenue.

Residents such as Damisch who live under the flight path of the alternate runway said they had to shut windows and doors, turn up televisions and rearrange dishes to keep them from crashing from cupboards onto the floor.

They have had to put up with the inconvenience on occasion in the past, when conditions such as contrary winds forced jetliners to use the alternate runway for brief periods, but this is their first taste of continual flights.

``If it was just a week, we might say, `Well, OK, we`ll put up with it.` But this is 2 1/2 months,`` said Daisy Bowman, who lives at the Cherokee Mobile Home Park, just a few yards from Interstate 595 and the north edge of the airport.

The alternate runway usually handles jetliners two or three times a month, Bowman said. On Thursday, she counted about 10 airplanes using the runway within an hour about noon.

``It`s like being tortured with slow dripping water,`` Bowman said.

Gus Carbonel, president of the Edgewood Civic Association, said that by Thursday afternoon, he had received several complaints about the increase in airplane noise.

``A couple of people already have said that their homes are shaking and their babies are waking up,`` Carbonel said.

Four residents recently filed a class-action suit against the county and Broward`s Aviation Department. They will ask a federal judge on Monday to stop the resurfacing work unless officials ban flights after 10 p.m.

Bowman said she was watching television when dishes in her kitchen cabinets began falling from their shelves.

``You sit here in the chair and you hear something drop, and you think, `Oh boy, what next?``` Bowman said.

Bowman estimated that her electric bill will rise $25 because she will now have to run her air conditioning all day.

And She said that still will not help her sleep at night.

``I don`t know how I`ll sleep,`` she said. ``Maybe I`ll drink a six-pack and pass out, and I`m not even a drinking person.``